Removing Fixtures

Often when new buildings are built, more fixtures are installed than necessary. This is especially true in office space buildings where tenant improvements have been done. Often times when a tenant improvement is done, walls are built and or removed and the lighting does not match, this could cause fixtures to be placed in wrong spots or in useless areas.

With today’s lighting standards most offices run the risk of being over lit. In today’s computer heavy work environment, it is believed that people are not only more productive but overall happier when light levels are slightly lower. In fact studies suggest that lighting in work environments is literally draining employees’ will to work.

When doing an LED lighting retrofit, it is important to consider completely removing some fixtures first before retrofitting with new more efficient LED lamps. Why retrofit a fixture that doesn’t need to exist in the first place?

Removing Lamps from fixtures.

This is one of the most efficient ways to save energy on lighting loads without spending a ton of money on new fixtures. Typical office space buildings have 3 lamp and/or 4 lamp grid mount troffer fixtures. These fixtures can easily be retrofitted with a retrofit kit that will take either a 3 lamp or 4 lamp fixture to a new efficient 2 lamp fixture. By just doing this and not changing anything else, you can save anywhere between 30% – 50% of a lighting load.

Example.

A typical, 4 lamp, 32 Watt, T8 fixture that is turned on 10 hours a day will consume 26,880 Watts of power during a standard working month.

A typical, 2 lamp, 32 watt, T8 fixture under the same environment will consume on 50% less power or 161,280 watts over that same year!

REal World Example

While he was working as an energy manager for the State of Utah’s Division of Facilities and Construction Management (DFCM) Christopher Atkins, Co-Founder and CTO of Summa Energy Solutions, executed a lighting retrofit at the Utah State Tax Commission office building in downtown Salt Lake City. He was able to reduce the number of fixtures that were inside the building as well as remove 50% of the lamps that were inside the building.

Doing this, along with installing fixtures that dispersed lighting more efficiently as well as implementing daylight harvesting controls he was able to save tax payers over 70% of the lighting load of this building!

Interested in learning how much money you can save by performing a lighting retrofit? First you need to know how much of your load comes from lighting. Learn more about how to measure your lighting load and energy demand.